Black Militias Take New Tack

Urban militia

Political Efforts, Not Paramilitary Training, Fuel Movement

DETROIT — Clifford Brookins II answers the door in camouflage and combat boots, proud to be a leader of one of Michigan's self-styled citizen militias.

But Brookins is not your stereotypical militia member - an angry white man who likes to spend weekends in the woods with a gun.

First, Brookins is leery of guns.

Second, he doesn't live near the woods, but in Detroit.

Third, he's black.

Brookins, commander of the Detroit Constitutional Militia, is part of a small group of black people in Michigan who have been drawn to the militia movement - armed groups of private citizens who are opposed to gun control, on guard against a federal government they consider tyrannical and pretty certain that the United Nations is leading a conspiracy to enslave the United States.

The movement is most prominent in rural areas, but to Brookins ''the battle's in Detroit, not in all these small towns up north.''

The battle, he says, is against an illegal court system, against a corrupt elite class that cheats the common people and against a conspiracy to keep blacks down with drugs.

''The community is outraged,'' Brookins, 48, said in an interview this month. ''They're getting to the place where you're going to have a war with police and prosecutors. People have been getting beat down by judges for years. . . . They've got this court system, and they're running kids through it like cattle.''

Lawyers, he said, are among the forces selling out the United States to a socialist world government, or New World Order.

''How do you keep people down? You dope them up. You've got rich white bankers and stuff, and the Army's into it, the higher-ups are into it, anyone who has the boats and planes. How are you going to sell a country out from under folks if you don't keep them doped up?''

Brookins says the Detroit Constitutional Militia emphasizes political efforts such as petition drives, not guns and paramilitary training.

''Personally, I think Detroit has too many guns,'' said Brookins. The members' usual uniform is not camouflage, but black sweats bearing the group's name. ''What do we need camouflage for?'' Brookins said. ''We have buildings down here, not trees.''

He said the group has 15 board members and several hundred participants, a claim that's difficult to verify, because they don't gather for training.

The presence of blacks in the militia movement might be a contradiction in terms to many. Though militia activists disavow racism, civil-rights groups say militia leaders in several states have backgrounds in white supremacist groups. Racist literature often pops up in the movement.

That doesn't bother Brookins.

''Maybe there is some racism,'' he said. ''If all they know is what they see about black people in the media, how can they help it? Once we sit down at the table, we'll work it out.''

Brookins, a building contractor, and other black militia activists are focused on the criminal courts. They say most convictions are illegal because the accused are not charged by grand jury indictment.

Constitutional law textbooks say the Fifth Amendment grand-jury guarantee applies in the federal courts, not in state courts.

Another black militia supporter is the Rev. Dr. Garnell McAfee Jr., president of the Unity Community of Biblical Economics, a Detroit-based group that promises participants they can get out of debt by following economic principles laid down in the Bible.

McAfee, who says he's an ecclesiastical adviser for the militia, said white militia members opposed to gun control are reacting to the same oppression blacks have faced for a long time.